Overcoming Negative Symptoms of Schizophrenia

Negative symptoms of schizophrenia offer a harsh reality for me. I noticed a change in my ability to feel emotion shortly after I began exhibiting symptoms of schizophrenia but long before formal diagnosis. I was well-acquainted with feelings of depression and anxiety related to surviving child sexual abuse, but this was different. I lost interest in activities I formerly enjoyed, I no longer felt like associating with others and I felt a tremendous sense of indifference towards life in general. I was experiencing negative symptoms of schizophrenia.

What Are Negative Symptoms of Schizophrenia?

Certain aspects of what I felt are common to other forms of mental illness. For instance, a loss of interest in formerly enjoyed activities is a typical feature of major depressive disorder known as anhedonia. I experienced this during previous episodes of depression, but what troubled me about this particular episode was that it didn’t fully resolve. Instead, I found this emotional state to be pervasive, persistent and progressive.

You’re likely more familiar with the positive symptoms of schizophrenia. In fact, if I were asked to define schizophrenia in one phrase, I would say, “paranoid voices.” Positive symptoms tend to attract notice and often result in treatment. After all, it is human nature to focus on obvious abnormalities over subtle absences. But that’s exactly what negative symptoms of schizophrenia are for me: the subtle absence of normal human emotion.

Negative Symptoms of Schizophrenia Affect Emotion

The level of subtlety associated with negative symptoms varies. If you witnessed someone in a state of catatonia, you probably wouldn’t call it subtle. But would you notice if someone close to you gradually stopped laughing at jokes, progressively began speaking with reduced inflection and slowly withdrew from the company of others?

I was unable to understand my state of emotional dysregulation until I was diagnosed with schizophrenia. My feelings, or lack thereof, finally made sense when considered in that context. I understood why I no longer enjoyed the company of others, why I no longer engaged in spontaneous activities and why I felt very little joy even in the absence of overt depression; I understood a significant component of why I no longer wanted to live.

If only understanding were synonymous with healing. Negative symptoms are difficult to overcome. Antipsychotics for psychotic illnesses aren’t terribly effective at treating this aspect of the disease, and psychotherapy isn’t a magic bullet either. Not to mention that many of us, myself included, suffer from comorbid illnesses such as social anxiety or depression which have significant crossover with the negative symptoms of schizophrenia. But I won’t dive down the rabbit hole providing an origination theory for each of my symptoms tonight; I’ll save that for therapy in the morning.

Find a Reason to Experience Emotion

Overcoming negative symptoms of schizophrenia means you are in for a fight. You must battle your way back into life when you probably don’t feel like doing so. It means trying to embrace emotions that you barely feel. It means fighting positive and negative symptoms and maybe even social anxiety to associate with others. It means fighting the urge to isolate for the experience of laughing and playing with your children because they don’t stay little for long.

I hate that it requires effort for me to feel emotion. It’s awful. But I loathe feeling nothing at all. Find a reason to experience emotion, and work to experience emotion towards that reason. My reason is my kids. I know that I love them. Now I want to feel it.

Author: Randall Law

Randall Law is a physician assistant, wedding cake design assistant and home renovation assistant. He is excited that this new opportunity to write a blog comes without the title of assistant. He writes because he cares about others and because it provides an outlet approved by both his wife and his therapist. Randall's wife, Megan, is the author of Mental Illness in the Family here at HealthyPlace where she writes about her own perspectives. Find Randall on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and his blog.

My Mom had schizophrenia, she died when i was ten years old. Do I have the same thing can anyone say. Im 55 now, and am having trouble thinking, get anxiety, depression, not a drinker tho at all and no drugs either.

Thank you for reading Joe. I am sorry to hear of the loss of your mother and of your own struggles. HealthyPlace offers self-screening tools at https://www.healthyplace.com/psychological-tests. One of the tools helps screen for schizophrenia. I encourage you to utilize these tools, but I also encourage you to visit with a physician or other medical provider about the symptoms you are having. It would be difficult to determine exactly what you are suffering from without a formal medical evaluation. I wish you all the best.

This struck a chord with me. Firstly, I’d no idea there were negative a positive symptoms of mental illness-honestly none of them seem super positive to me, but your explaination cleared that up,and believe it or not that was helpful. When I’m aware of feelings (and lack thereof) coming and going sometimes it seems like I can pinpoint a specific incident that seems to have started my emotional shutdown , and sometimes it seems like an accumulation of events with something seemingly innocuous being the last straw-sometimes I can’t even tell you what it is. This may be your most helpful post yet for me personally. The brown cardboard background was way better and more cost effective than a green screen and you didn’t have to worry about floating head issues from wearing the wrong color. Maybe next time let your children draw a “stage set” on it in homage to your theatre background (which we share). Something with a crackling fireplace in a cozy cottage so you can wear a cardigan sweater and pretend to smoke a pipe. Just a suggestion. Thanks for posting again, Randall and hang in there.

Thank you for reading and for your comments Rachel. The different symptoms of schizophrenia are certainly interesting. I also struggle with "last straw" melt-downs. I've tried to take my videos in front of my electric fireplace before, but it sits too low to the ground. I like the pipe idea though. Thanks for reading. You hang in there too.

Understanding symptoms in general is truly so helpful and empowering. Understanding the subtleties and nuances within those specific symptoms can really help to paint a much clearer picture of thorough knowledge and acceptance. Insightful, honest read. Thank you for posting.